


Life on Gunsmoke

by JoJolightningfingers



Series: uncut, unpolished [7]
Category: Trigun
Genre: Angst, F/M, Ficlet Collection, M/M, PWP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:27:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26582869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoJolightningfingers/pseuds/JoJolightningfingers
Summary: Alien biology, nights spent sleepless, two people mourning the same man, and more. Not necessarily canon-compliant.Only a few of these are majorly explicit.
Relationships: Meryl Stryfe/Vash the Stampede, Vash the Stampede/Livio the Double Fang, Vash the Stampede/Nicholas D. Wolfwood
Series: uncut, unpolished [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1816336
Comments: 5
Kudos: 16





	1. Vash/Meryl - NSFW

**Author's Note:**

> Ace is a fucking enabler.  
> I drabbled most of these in discord while i was watching/reading the series and didn't edit or revise them at all. This really is the purest form of my thoughtvomit, given that some of these aren't even concluded properly. Hope it inspires something in someone anyhow! (maybe i'll turn some of them into proper pieces later)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vash/Meryl featuring vash with slightly weird alien biology. it is also the first thing i wrote for trigun, sometime in late august.

"So." Meryl's glancing sidelong at him, hesitance enough in her eyes that Vash feels fear trickle down his throat. "Can I ask you..."

"...Can you ask me what?" He fidgets, gauging her reactions carefully. He doesn't clad himself in leather and layers on this desert planet for the masochistic pleasure of it, he doesn't _want_ anybody to see the ruin he's let his body become. For all that he pants after pretty women and yearns for intimacy, for _connection_ with someone else, he's all too brutally aware that he's just _not one of them_. That he's too different. That he's alien. That when it comes down to it, he's too scared of having his heart laid bare to injury than he ever was of letting his flesh be shredded.

Rejection will kill him before any bullet or blade will. Getting this far with someone--he wants it, jokes about it, but it's hard for him to open up to it when it actually happens.

Meryl darts her eyes up to his face with that steely little glint in them, the one she gets when she's decided she's through humoring her own faults and those of others. "Is it... I don't know how to ask this but... Since you're an alien is it like... _different_ for you?" She makes a quick flapping gesture at him, reining in her embarrassment. She's awfully uptight for someone in her underwear.

"Different... how?" _Too different to work with a human? Not enough?_ Vash's head clouds up with a vague panic that he slams a mental gate on. Despite it, summoning his smiley demeanor to put her at ease is... difficult.

"You said you're a Plant, right? I want to know--is there anything I should be aware of? You don't have anything _weird_ down there. No seed pods or something?"

"Seed pods--what?" There's a terrible edge of disgust on her face and Vash wants to squirm. _Please, don't look at me that way, I'm a **person**._

 _Laugh it off. She probably doesn't mean it._ "Would it be a dealbreaker if it was~?" he asks, and pouts dramatically. "You'd break my heart."

Meryl does that thing where she puffs out her cheeks and furrows her brow like she's angry, but her blush is too even, too warm to be that. "No! I mean. If it's got spikes or teeth or barbs, _yeah_ , you're out of luck, but--"

 _She does mean it_. Vash curls his fingers against his clothed legs, shoulders sloping down. "Listen," and she shuts up at the hard edge in his voice. "If you don't want to, just _say_ so."

He's too chicken to look her in the eye when he says it, so afterwards when he gathers his nerve to, he's surprised by the deepened frown. The angle she leans forward at puts her cleavage on full display and he'll blame that distraction for how she gets close enough to slap him across the face.

She's done that before at varying intensities--this one is soft enough to be her version of a kiss, a mere lovetap. Doesn't stop it from stinging like he ran full tilt into a cactus. "D'ah! What the hell!" he whines, cupping his cheek, all anxiety blown away by confusion.

"You huge idiot," she snaps, the bite in her voice a mere run of teeth along skin, like she means to mark him and claim him as hers. "I'm asking because I want to know if _I_ have to do anything special to make _you_ feel good."

Oh. "...Oh." His throat bobs in a swallow. Acutely, he can feel everything heavy--the negativity in the room--drain down his body and out the soles of his feet, leaving him oddly tingly and... _ready._ "I--uh. N-no? I don't? Think so? I haven't really..." his voice trails off to a mumble, "...done this with a human before..."

"...Have you... done it at all?"

He curls up in on himself with his face buried in his knees. "No."

Meryl sighs and reaches a hand out to him, curls her fingers into his hair and runs her nails along his scalp. "Moron. You should've said something. Well we'll just have to work it out together then."

"Really?" He chances a peek out at her. She's not smiling, but she's soft around the edges.

"Yeah, really. Dope. Come on, get undressed."

He's shy as he peels himself out of his clothes, and Meryl does her best to hide the conflicted look in her eyes as she beholds the twisted mangled landscape of his scars. He's grateful for that, really; for all of two seconds, until she decisively brings her hands to the front of his pants and deftly works them open. At that point he _squeaks_ , a flush blazing up.

"Meryl?!"

"You're strong enough to stop me if you want. Until then I'm not going to let you tiptoe around this, Vash." Her gaze is fierce and consumptive; Vash feels it swallow him up. He lets her have her way--because she's right, he _could_ do whatever he wanted to her. He doesn't want to. But he could.

Maybe that's what she wants to tell him. If he knows how to control himself, there's no reason to fear himself.

By the time he's back from his musings, both of them are naked and she's got a little exasperated twist to her mouth. "I didn't mean you should _zone out_. That's just rude."

"S-sorry." He's having trouble keeping his eyes on her face. There's a lot of skin to look at, suddenly.

She's doing it too, at least. Her hands wander along with her gaze, over jagged tissue and landscapes of metal. Once Meryl works past the pity, Vash would describe the look in her eyes as wholly curious, interested. She eases him down on the bed, astride his hips, and slides her hands down what's left of his chest.

Just under his ribcage, her fingers run across the only pair of scars that _aren't_ scars--two spots like he was licked by fire that, no matter how old he gets, remain tender to the touch. He flinches, gasps softly. She halts immediately.

"Something wrong?"

"N-oh," he breathes, fingers caught in the bedsheets. "I think- that might be good?"

"What, here?" Meryl tilts her head at what she's doing and strokes her thumbs across the marks with more purpose. 

Vash bites down hard on a little whine and on his lip, meeting Meryl's eyes. " _Yeah._ "

Meryl's a thorough woman, never one to do things by half measures. With gentle, circling rubs, she works the length of the little marks and Vash's eyes nearly roll back in his head, his mouth trembles open. He can feel every bit of it in such fine detail, every nerve ending she lights up with the soft touch of her skin. When her nail catches at the fleshy little rise near the bottom, he looses a groan that's _way_ louder than he'd planned for it to be. He fists his hand in the sheet and turns to bite the edge of the pillow, jaw clenched so hard it hurts.

"You're okay?" The touch slows and Vash realizes his whole body's gone taut--the unclenching of every muscle is almost as pleasurable as her touch, and he makes a little noise at it, starved and stifled.

"Mmhm-" he mumbles out, fingers twitching nervelessly; his brain's too occupied with processing the fireflood in him, the carnal ache in the cradle of his hips, to be loquacious. "Meryl-" Her name rips out of his lungs; she's pressed down on that spot and he's _reeling_. "Ple _ase_ \- ah, I--"

She takes her hands away, both a blessing and a curse. Vash scrapes together enough neurons to gulp down air and look at himself. Meryl's doing the same, squinting curiously at the little marks she was playing with. They've... changed. Deepened in color from the maroon of a scar to some alien shade of violet, swollen up and hot. Meryl strokes one fingertip across the blister and Vash makes a gutpunched little noise.

"That's normal for you? Must be really sensitive..."

Talking's fucking _hard_ right now. "Yeah, it- I... don't know why. I just know that... humans don't have them." Lacking another arm to gesture at her with (he's afraid to release his grip on the bed), he tips his chin towards Meryl's slender torso. Perfectly pale, almost totally unmarked. "Unless... That's what those are for?"

Meryl huffs and almost unconsciously covers her chest. "Kind of, but they don't do _that_."

He's about to ask what she means when her palms cup the nodes at his ribs again and a shudder ripples through the length of his body, all the way down to his toes. One hand slides down between his legs, as if feeling for something- and stops. Vash watches her brow pinch up and her gaze flick down. "What-"

Vash wants to ask what's wrong, but she's apparently decided to short-circuit his entire nervous system in her groping; her soft hand probes around the join between his legs. He's not sure what she finds so perplexing. It's not unlike what she's got--just geared more towards protection. Meryl runs her nails along the seam of the sheathe, just starting to open in response to his arousal, and Vash loses his sense of time and place and being for a second. All he can comprehend is the hunger of his body, a pressure inside him that longs so fiercely he could go insane from it. He feels something- _shift_ \- and the feeling lessens, but Meryl squeaks in alarm, distantly, and her hands leave him again.

He's too blissed out to be worried, although he knows if he was in his right mind he'd probably be wounded by the look she's giving him. Meryl pokes cautiously at his cock, fully everted now, and he shivers. "What?" he asks her, reaching out to touch her shoulder. "Too much?"

"No," she assures him, mild like how she gets when she's trying to keep it together and not haul off on him. "Just. Most men don't pack that kind of heat _inside_ themselves. You surprised me, that's all."

Vash laughs. "I _am_ full of surprises," he says breezily, and Meryl rolls her eyes and gently takes him in hand. He shuts up then, his teasing swallowed back as a little gasp, as she works him slow and sure, feeling out each of the tiny little bumps along the length of the shaft. Every one she rubs makes his toes curl and he's soon panting again, anchoring himself on the soft skin of her thigh and trying not to let how good he's feeling sweep him away.

Nobody's _ever_ touched him like this.

Meryl's spent most of the time they've known each other being exasperated at him, rough and standoffish and just plain _disliking_ him--her attentiveness to his body is really astounding, given that. "That's good for you," she hums, the word upturned at the end so it's almost a question, and Vash screws his eyes shut. Her hand's a slice of heaven rare in this blasted wasteland planet, soft and getting slick from touching him. She squeezes him to get a better grip and his hips snap up, a plaintive moan punched out of him.

It occurs to him that he should _probably_ be reciprocating, distantly, but he's really unsure if he's even got the mental capacity to, at the moment. And Meryl--he has the feeling if it was really important to her at the moment, she'd be prompt in making her demands known. She always has before. In the brief glimpses of her face Vash can bear to get before his eyes are forced closed again by another wave of pleasure, she looks all too content to have him as he is--at her mercy, writhing and wet, so very close to begging.

He feels and doesn't question how her body shifts atop him, she's rearranging her position and he isn't sure how, can't think to question it. Then in quick sequence, she undoes him. Her hand turns so her palm rests firm at the base of his cock, she works the tips of two fingers carefully, so _gently_ into the space beneath its root, and something wet burns like a brand along the length of the mark under his left rib.

Vash _wails_. He's pretty sure he's about to die, he feels so _good_ , can't get enough air into his body no matter how hard he pants, and Meryl keeps moving her hands, winding him up with gentle little thrusts into his sheathe.

"God, you're loud," she grumbles, but in a way that says she likes that, and twists her fingers in gentle rhythm until she's got him reduced to sobbing. This ache is nothing like a gunshot, but he begs to be released from it all the same.

He has no idea how long Meryl keeps him like that, keyed up and babbling her name in incoherent fractions, clawing at the sheets. He just knows at some point he manages to focus on something other than what she's doing to him, and it's mostly because she gives him enough leeway to come back down. Vash, still whining, sees her blurry through tears as she comes up and, with unthinkable, uncharacteristic tenderness, kisses his collarbone. Her hands are on his thighs now, that wicked tongue away from the nodes. "Still with me, tough guy?" she asks.

His arm feels like lead when he lifts it to swipe the wetness from his eyes and the corner of his mouth. His cock throbs, unsatisfied and unignorable. Is it just that much more intense because it's his first time with someone else? He's never worked _himself_ up to this point. "Y-yeah. I- I'm okay. It just- _nngh_ ," he mewls; tossing his head back; she's taken that as permission to continue and is teasingly tracing the hole she was just fingering, which is oversensitive and aching. "F-feels a- _ahh_ \- amazing-" he chokes out.

"Yeah? Sounds like it. Never heard you like this before."

She's so matter of fact about it Vash has enough awareness to be embarrassed. He covers his face, chewing on his lip to hold back a pitiful sound. "You- can't I help you too? C'mon, I- _fuck!_ "

Meryl's driven her fingers into him again, and what do you know, the digits are slender and dainty enough to go in down to the knuckle. The last fragment of Vash's sanity clings on just long enough to hear Meryl say, "Oh no. I'm having fun for once and I _don't_ want to be interrupted," before resigning itself to oblivion.


	2. Vashwood - NSFW

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The part before the break owes its existence to Karaii's lovely fusion comic, it brainwormed me really hard. The part after the break is a little older, and spawned from a tweet or a tumblr post i saw somewhere about (i think??) good omens about godlike beings achieving climax by just. firing all the neurons in their partner's brains at once. and i liked that concept.

"What's it like, to share a mind with someone?" Wolfwood asks, staring up at the ceiling. The question voices itself, it seems; after having just finished sharing so much skin, so much heat, that just feels like the next logical step. That he yearns to share even more of himself with Vash is a revelation that he folds up and tucks away for later consideration.

Vash turns on his side facing him, the fingers that he has laced loosely with the priest's squeezing a little, like he's contemplating. "Invasive," he decides eventually. He sets his head on Wolfwood's ribs, mouth a thin pensive line. "But good. Why do you ask?"

"Curious, that's all. Most people can't claim to know exactly what someone else is thinking. But you could." He meets Vash's eyes, green as the rare grass that grows on Gunsmoke. "If you wanted to."

Vash goes very still then and Wolfwood wonders if he's done something wrong, but the Typhoon smiles softly, after a while, and nuzzles in. "You trust me that much?"

"With my life. And if you don't believe me, feel free to have a look around."

Vash laughs, and squeezes Wolfwood's fingers in the gaps between his own. "Right now?"

"If you wanna."

"I'd be honored."

It's oddly formal for this man, but so heartfelt it makes Wolfwood's bones ache.

The actual _process_ of mindmelding with Vash is... alien, aptly. Where their fingers are interlocked, touching, Wolfwood feels something almost like an _itch_ , and then the supremely weird sensation of actually, physically fusing together. He has no time to ponder over how it vaguely makes him want to throw up because suddenly he's _more_ than just his own skin and bones and heart.

He drags in a deep breath and stares down wide-eyed at Vash, a low-voltage current running through the back of his brain and manifesting in the length of his spine as _want_. Not skin-hunger, not lust, just... closeness. He sighs, shaky, and lifts his free hand to stroke Vash's cheek. He feels a phantom of his own touch, like the greenshift in the infinite reflections of two facing mirrors. "Oh, wow," he murmurs, and Vash smiles too, leans in and touches their foreheads together.

"Can you hear what I'm thinking?" Vash asks him with his eyes closed, and Wolfwood tries. Reaches for him, mentally, and feels Vash's consciousness wrap around him like a blanket, woolen words encasing him. _Warm_ , one of them purrs to him, _soft, good... Wolfwood, all mine, want to hold him, want to feel him..._

"That much, huh." Wolfwood's a little dazed by it, these raw and unshielded desires, and feels, in his own head, Vash allowing _his_ thoughts to caress his being. Wolfwood thinks at him, _I want you to; want you, scars and all, please._

_Kiss me._

Vash does, and it's like swallowing lightning.

The touching starts as simple curiosity, once they've steeped themselves in each other's mutual want. _Touch me?_ Vash's mind asks, sort of breathy, sort of nervy. Wolfwood complies without thinking about it; his thoughts are Vash's now, wishes and commands one and the same.

Each corner of him sings when he runs his hand down Vash's flank, his own touch rebounding on him fractally, intensely, until they're both making soft noise into each other's mouths. Vash grabs for him too, here and there as if unsure where he wants to touch first.

Well, there's no as if about it, really. Wolfwood can hear him, the fragments of his thoughts whipped up. _Feels good; feels warm; want more... where does he like it; want to feel all of him; where first_ , it all echoes through Wolfwood's head. Beneath what's comprehensible runs an undercurrent of wordless sound, whines and moans that could be either one of theirs. Vash's mouth, apparently, is sensitive. Who knew. Wolfwood flicks his tongue against the blond's and relishes the jolt that echoes down his spine and the wisp of a curse that swims between their link.

 _Down, Vash._ Wolfwood's having issues being coherent himself; the blond's squirming threatens to overload both their skins. His fingers flex, a vain attempt to hold on to something. _Here-_ he gasps when Vash pulls back to let him breathe, and Wolfwood leads their joined hands down between them, lets them both grasp for his cock.

The jagged edges of Vash's surprised pleasure scald through Wolfwood's own head and it takes all he has not to surrender to climax there and then.

* * *

"You're okay still, Wolfwood?"

 _Who in God's name is Wolfwood,_ the priest wants to say, but all that comes from his throat is a pitiful, ground-out groan. His body's not his own, the strings have all been cut and given over for a different hand to play them. A storm holds his reins now; and he holds them so gently. Vash shushes him softly when he cries out, shifting his crossed legs to better accommodate the priest, who's sprawled across his lap like Jesus in the Pieta, and isn't that a blasphemous comparison.

When people talk about getting their mind blown, Wolfwood can already tell he's going to be thinking of this from now on. Vash strokes a circle into his temple gently with his thumb and doesn't even wince when Wolfwood bites down on his hip to keep from tearing his own lip.

The feeling is... near indescribable, like the inside of his skull is strung like a harp and Vash, somehow, has reached in and plucked those notes until he sings. He's not being touched, but he is, the neurons are firing like Vash has a fist around his aching cock but the Typhoon's other hand is flat-palmed on his chest, fingers laced with his own. Brain scratch, the parts of him that are trying to make sense of this all are babbling, _anything_ to put a name to this phenomenon. Fingers in the gray matter, ghost-fire down the spine, scalding every nerve. Skin hunger on overdrive.

The majority of him is writhing, toes pulling at the sheets and nails carving lines into Vash's lower back, five more insignificant marks on the terrain of that man's body. "God," Wolfwood sobs, wrapping an arm around Vash's narrow waist and mooring himself there for fear of drifting off on this sea. "F- _fu-uck_ , I- Vash- god, so good-"

Vash, damn his soft heart, curls his fingers and scratches through his hair all loving; the sensation recedes but he's still bowstring-taut. When his skin stops feeling like he's slept on a bed of needles, Vash settles his hand at the base of his neck and massages the tight muscles there, humming serenely like he hasn't spent the last little while turning Wolfwood inside out. Wolfwood cracks his eyes and looks up at him, skimming a palm up his back, over metal and scar tissue. "Fuck," he sighs again, less raw and more awed. The full-body yearning Vash prompted in him has pulled back from his skin and pooled down at the base of his spine; Wolfwood shivers at how he aches to be touched. "You're somethin' else, sunshine."

Vash grins and pinches slightly at Wolfwood's spine; the priest arcs up with a sharp, surprised grunt, soaking in a sensation that feels like a tongue running hot down his front. He relaxes into its passing with a little close-mouthed moan, which Vash chuckles at. "Glad you're okay. You seemed a little out of it there for a minute. Did I go too hard?"

"I mean, you were more or less jerking off my whole nervous system. Who wouldn't be out of it from that?" Wolfwood turns his head and smiles against Vash's stomach, scruffing his stubble against the toned muscle to make Vash squirm and whine too. "I think you did, though. Go a little too hard. It's good, but it's better when I can hear myself think in there, and not just you."

"R-right. Sorry." 

"Hey, no need for sorry." Seeing Vash all crestfallen like a sodden puppy always makes him tender; he's long since made his peace with that. "I'll just do it back to you." He grins, watching Vash's throat bob in a swallow that says he knows Wolfwood means business.

But the blond recovers, and he folds himself in half to kiss Wolfwood's lips. The grip at the back of Wolfwood's neck tightens just a tiny bit, and the priest prepares himself to meet his maker.


	3. Vashwood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Various not-necessarily-connected scene snips centered around vashwood: some fluffy, some angsty, almost all pretentious. They're in order by when I wrote them but if you turn a couple of them sideways, they probably line up.

"There's a story 'hind each one of these," Wolfwood says, tracing the contour of one of Vash's many scars. "I aim to know 'em all by the time I'm old and gray."  
  
It's a declaration, as close to vows as anybody has ever given to the Humanoid Typhoon.  
  
"I don't remember _all_ of them," he warns, tangling his long legs up with Wolfwood's, hooking him around the ankles to tempt him into doing the same. "You know some of those are older than you are."  
  
"Then tell me 'bout the ones you do remember, cradle-robber," Wolfwood teases, his touch wending a familiar path down Vash's back, over the metal riveted into his living flesh.  
  
"That'd take a while."  
  
"I'm not going anywhere."  
  
"Years. Probably."  
  
"You heard what I said, needle-noggin."  
  
Vash smiles.

* * *

He's older than his grandfather's bones, this Humanoid Typhoon, this chewed-up spat-out tattered scrap of sunshine. He's forgotten about more hatred and bitterness than most men bear witness to in a lifetime, taken on more burden.  
  
Its weight has not crushed him, changed him, broken him. The scars on his body are not weakness.  
  
Somehow it feels holy that he can make Vash smile genuinely, and every time he does Wolfwood dies a little more inside. Vash says nothing the first time he tucks his face against his throat to hide his tears, cards fingers through his hair and listens to him speak with the recklessness that only alcohol and heartache can bring.  
  
 _I envy you so much_ , he'd told him; _I wish I could see what you see in the world_. And Vash had tucked him closer so that Wolfwood could near taste the words as they came out of his mouth.  
  
 _There's always time to learn. I can teach you how._  
  
The sun shines down on sinners the same as it does saints, Wolfwood realizes then. He wonders how long Vash has known this. He wonders what Vash sees in him. He hopes it's something good.

* * *

 _Am I worth something, even as I am,_ Wolfwood whispers, and Vash pulls him in his beaten, broken arms and holds him so tight Wolfwood can't breathe. A swirl of thought curls around him that surely, there can be no mistaking this man as human. Only a Plant could put off so much warmth, such energy.  
  
 _Everyone is worth something,_ says a man worth more money than there is in the world, fingers brushing the stubble around Wolfwood's jaw. _Always, no matter what they do._ The storm kisses Wolfwood, gentle and sweet, and the priest sends a prayer heavenward that he be allowed to lose himself in it and come through the other side better. _And you, you're worth so much to me._

* * *

Wolfwood forgets sometimes, how old Vash really is. Years don't stick to him the way they do to other folk. He remains irrepressibly childlike in his mannerisms, childish even. High-energy, fun-loving, and sweet.  
  
And then sometimes he'll take Wolfwood apart and put him back together like he will his revolver, with gentle, practiced hands, the way only someone who's been caring for things for a century can. Wolfwood's claims to stamina are tested to their absolute limits; the first time Vash left him a broken, shuddering mess in the bed they shared, throat raw with moans and honest tears leaking from his eyes. He'd felt _hollow_ , emptied completely out by the climax wrung from him, and Vash had held him through it and filled him back up with warmth and tenderness.  
  
Wolfwood worshiped without knowing what to, exactly, but he thinks he may have found a focus, finally. Or at least (and less extreme), a better reason to keep living than inertia.

* * *

"Just hold me."  
  
He does. The weight of another man is heavy but it's somehow a comfort to Vash. Seems a little pathetic to him, to take advantage of another's pain and grief to sate his own starvation for touch, but what can he do? People don't love storms, don't touch them, dare not dream of holding them. Much less so do they consider _demons_ , like they think him to be.  
  
Twisted as it is, he needs it. So he holds lays on his back and wraps his arms around Wolfwood like ivy, covetous and crawling, brings the priest to his heart and hugs him like he means to slip him under his skin.  
  
It shocks him when Wolfwood does it back. Those strong arms working underneath his shoulders pressed into the pillows, clinging and grasping like a vine. He can feel the shape of Wolfwood's nose and cheeks, strong and handsome, bury into his throat, feels the tremble of his breath against his collarbones. He holds tight.  
  
Vash holds tighter. Wolfwood's breath hitches for an instant and then starts again, even more broken. He says nothing.  
  
He must know he doesn't need to. How long has it been since he's been hugged like this, the kind of hug that ruins people. Since either of them were.  
  
He doesn't care to ask. He pens the answer down as 'too long' and shuts his eyes to breathe it in.

* * *

Blasphemy comes easy to Vash but that it comes so easy to Wolfwood is a funny little twist. But should he be so surprised? It's hardly the first time he's known a preacher with a taste for the communion wine.  
  
 _This is my blood,_ the storm muses as he drains his glass, leaning in just as soon as it's swallowed to trade another sloppy kiss with Wolfwood, breath and alcohol mingling in the empty apse. They drink in God's house, leaned against His altar, and do not think about the people they failed to keep from Him too soon. With his eyes closed, Vash can't tell himself from Wolfwood; the insides of both their mouths taste the same, sin and guilt and ethyl.  
  
He should feel bad about doing this here but if the priest doesn't object, Vash can't think of a reason to. He's the only person Vash knows with hands just as bloody and a heart just as tender as his own. For that reason, Vash will commit his all to him.  
  
 _Take, eat._ Vash lets Wolfwood pull him in and climbs atop him, pins him in against the stone and timber as a shield. _For this is my body,_ he thinks, _and I will give it to you._ The words don't pass his lips but Wolfwood must hear them regardless, and bites down on him when Vash works a hand down his pants.  
  
Plenty of people have taken that offer of him before--what are his scars but testaments to the lives he spared, by covenant of blood spilled and body broken? Wolfwood whispers a prayer against his collarbones and Vash smiles.  
  
 _Do this in remembrance of me._

* * *

It starts with the man who falls through the roof in front of the pulpit.  
  
Wolfwood is cleaning the altar after mass, and the vaulted church ceiling gives way explosively, stone and shingle raining down. Something hits the ground so hard the earth shakes like it's about to split open and swallow them down, and Wolfwood flings his arms before his eyes to shield them from the shockwave of burning feathers that pour over in a typhoon.  
  
When the ash settles, Wolfwood still hasn't found his voice. Which is just as well--he has no idea what he would have said seeing what comes out of the crater. Lanky, scarred, with bloody wings and a shattered pair of horns that can only have once been a halo.  
  
The fallen angel pulls himself up with the altar's assistance, swimming eyes finding Wolfwood standing stunned in the corner. He opens his mouth and says, all croakish, "Help," before passing out.

+  
"Will you do one more thing for me?" asks Vash, as the being calls himself. _Being_ is the most appropriate thing they can think to call him. He doesn't remember why he was thrown from heaven, only that he was--his halo is in ruins so he cannot be an angel. He doesn't know why Hell has not claimed him yet--his wings, though grayed, are feathered, so he cannot be a devil.  
  
Is he neither? Both? Greater than the sum of those parts?  
  
"What?" Wolfwood asks him, removing the last of the bandages.  
  
"File my horns down for me. I... don't like looking at them like this."  
  
"...And your wings?"  
  
Vash's smile in the mirror is slanted and pained. "I couldn't ask you to butcher me that way. It could still be blasphemous."  
  
"Isn't that sort of self-harm a sin too?"  
  
Vash laughs, melodious, but sad. "That could be why I'm down here in the first place."

* * *

He puts so much _effort_ into not killing. That's the part that pisses Wolfwood off the most. It takes no talent or skill at all to point a gun and hit something vital; an eight year old could do it (and he should know, the back of his mind whispers). Thought of like that, Wolfwood can only feel base and evasive, perpetually taking the easy way out. Lesser. He hates that. He's suffered too, isn't that worth something?  
  
And yet, the Typhoon sweeps him up in his stormfront effortlessly; Wolfwood can't bear to leave. He sits stewing as he watches Vash do some truly ridiculous exercises: drawing, holstering, all with less force than it takes to crack an egg, all with such impeccable balance and control that he doesn't even wobble. While _blindfolded_. Unbelievable.  
  
It should not be so intriguing that it keeps Wolfwood in the same spot for half an hour, silent and motionless. Maybe he's rationalizing it as a game: maybe he can get Vash to lose track of where he is, because infuriatingly he's noticed--the barrel never points toward him, not even for half a second.  
  
The priest storms out to eat breakfast and another half hour later, comes back to see him still at it. As annoying as Wolfwood finds it, he can't simply _not_ respect that kind of dedication. That's the reason why he has a second serving wrapped in linen for when he finally gets a chance to interrupt. Yeah, gotta be.

"You reek, needle-noggin," Wolfwood says blandly when Vash lifts the blindfold and holsters his gun, blinking owlish at him. Wolfwood thrusts the wrapped breakfast at him. "Can y'at least crack a window before you go doing this next time?"  
  
Vash blinks again, holding the package in his hands with a tiny downward turn to his mouth, soft and curious. He smiles at Wolfwood all full and genuine (He loves that smile, he _hates_ that smile, hates how it makes him want him so much) and sets the package aside on the table. "Yeah, sure. I'll eat this when I'm done, okay? Thank you."  
  
The hell of it is, Wolfwood feels no compulsion to do anything other than watch this happen. There's a million things he could be doing right now but bearing witness to this, this testament to a storm's benevolence, is more important than all of them somehow. He holds his vigil as Vash strips his shirt off and trades the gun in for simple muscle training, metered and as ingrained in a way that only repetition fosters.  
  
He makes himself strong so he can _choose_ to be weak, Wolfwood realizes, and bites his lip near to bleeding at the thought. Is that the meaning of God's mercy? So as He is all-powerful, so too is He infinite in compassion? Is it proportional; does one not exist without the other?  
  
So where does that leave him? He, Wolfwood, holy man with a cross on his back. The fact that he executes that line of thinking as coldly and decisively as he would a human is perhaps the answer and conclusion to it.  
  
This is stupid. It's been two hours; he's cramped from sitting still so long, watching muscle move beneath Vash's battered hide. He frankly balks when Vash, chest heaving like a bellows, takes all of five seconds rest after finishing before he goes for his gun to put himself through the motions again.  
  
"What- didn't you already do that? Give it a rest already," Wolfwood grouses.

Vash smiles again, hooded tiredness in his eyes with a flash of teeth in his grin. "Well yeah, but- I have to be able to shoot just as well tired as I can when I'm fresh." He wipes his forehead with his shirt and blindfolds himself again. "If I can't aim well..."  
  
Wolfwood knows the end to that sentence and he's had enough. "Yeah and you're not gonna be able to aim well _anyway_ if your muscles give out in the middle of a firefight. Seriously, rest. Eat your damn breakfast."  
  
"Y’know I've been doing this every morning since before you were even a sparkle in your daddy's eye," Vash pouts, aggravatingly petulant for someone with a whole terrain map carved into his body. "Think I don't know what I'm doing or something?"  
  
That's what Wolfwood has to remind himself of the second Vash mentions his father and every drop of blood in his veins goes ice cold. _Breathe_ , he reminds himself, trying to clench some heat back into his fists so he doesn't do something stupid. _He doesn't know about your father. He didn't mean it. He doesn't_ _ **know**_ _._ "Can you just," he growls, cracked and controlled and he's glad Vash can't see whatever the look on his face right now is, " _stop_."

* * *

The thought that Vash could sing is one that, somehow, never crossed his mind.  
  
He wakes early in the morning to a soft tune wending through the sluggish dawn; the lyrics worm into Wolfwood's consciousness slowly to bring him gently awake. At first, sleep clouds their meaning, but he's listening all the same.  
  
 _"There will come a soldier, who carries a mighty sword; he will tear your city down, oh lei oh lai oh Lord..."_  
  
The tune's an old one; Wolfwood thinks he may have heard it before, but where and when he couldn't say. As the soft, clear voice quavers on the sustained notes, Wolfwood soaks it in along with the sunlight, a gnarled tangle of emotion rooting like a hawthorn in his ribcage.  
 _  
"There will come a poet, whose weapon is his word; he will slay you with his tongue, oh lei oh lai oh Lord..."_  
  
Finally he finds the strength to open his eyes and see which angel sings such hymns. It is Vash, as much as he can't believe it, standing half-dressed with his elbows on the windowsill, gazing out over the horizon and smiling softly as he sings. Where did he learn to carry a tune, Wolfwood wonders; when? In the morning's profile, he all but glows, and Wolfwood thinks he hasn't seen anything so beautiful.  
  
 _"There will come a ruler, whose brow is laid in thorn; smeared with oil like David's boy, oh lei oh lai oh Lord..."_  
  
Wolfwood waits for the melody to run its course before he dares to sit up. Vash catches the motion immediately from the corner of his eye and he turns, looking vaguely surprised. "Oh! Morning. Were you listening?"  
  
What does he have to be embarrassed about? The idiot. Wolfwood beckons him over and leans up to kiss him softly. "There's worse ways to wake up, that's for sure," he murmurs into his ear. "'ve heard plenty of people that don't sound half as good as you."  
  
The smile against his lips is a sacred thing. "Well. I've just had time, that's all."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah vash sings the oh hellos, no i will not elaborate why
> 
> kinda really like that fallen angel!vash au still actually hmmmmm.


	4. Plantfangs/Venus Flytrap: on mourning the same man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> obligatory 'vash buries wolfwood' scene, and then i altered canon so vash elopes with livio at the end of the manga so they can lick their (and each other's) wounds in peace. it is complicated, so of course i'm into it.
> 
> I call the ship Plantfangs, ace calls it Venus Flytrap. i can't decide which is better.

Some parts of him always knew this would happen, from the moment he learned what his own hair fading gold to black meant for him--his own life being used up, a deliberate numbering of all the days he had left.  
  
Wolfwood's had hair black as a raven's feathers since the first day they met and no matter how much life and energy he brought to their little band, the truth is that he'd probably considered himself dead a very long time ago. He'd have said, this is how it was meant to go.  
  
The pain in Vash's heart is no lesser for that knowledge. He arcs a vent of lightning skyward and listens to the crack of thunder that answers him, and feels somewhat better. Without having to look, he knows what his reflection's going to look like now. But now he has the courage to get up and give the man he loved one last thing.  
  
Looking at Wolfwood is... difficult. A quick glance and you'd think him sleeping, but his chest doesn't move, and his eyes are glassy and sightless. Vash closes them, and spares a moment to tenderly wipe away the tear that cut a track through the blood on his face.  
  
Despite this monumental loss, Vash can't help but smile, thinking of what Rem would think of Wolfwood. His hand lingers on Wolfwood's cheek, still warm under the sun.  
  
"Well," he murmurs softly, letting the wind carry his voice off to nowhere. "Let's go."  
  
Because despite Wolfwood's own efforts, the priest won't bury himself.

The grave's a humble one, but Wolfwood wouldn't have wanted anything more, even if they didn't have the threat of death looming literally above their heads. Vash spares a glance for the ship before he sets the shovel aside and goes to collect its occupant.  
  
Vash knows that he's stalling, straightening all the folds in Wolfwood's clothes as best he can, wiping off the gore and dirt. He knows it, and it doesn't matter a whit. He has to do this. The end of the world can wait. When he's forced to admit there are no faults left, he just... lingers, for a moment. Gazes at his best friend, still and silent.  
  
The end of the world can wait, but it's not going to forever. Vash cards his fingers through Wolfwood's soft black hair, pushes it back and leans in to kiss his forehead one last time. Then he gathers him up in his arms and carries him over. At the edge of the wound in the earth, Vash looks at, smiles at, holds Wolfwood for the final time, and hugs him close.  
  
"Rest easy now, Wolfwood," he says to the saint, and goes to his knees to return him to the earth. "I'll finish it. For us both."  
  
Wolfwood, of course, does not respond. But he can hear that snarky drawl somewhere in the back of his skull: _Heh, I know ya will._  
  
Then, the hole is filled. Vash pours out the rest of the bottle they'd been drinking from over the gravestone, quietly watching glistening amber fill up the channels of the cross he carved into it as soon as it was in place.  
  
And inside him, things splinter and fracture, things that will never mend completely. But he has survived this once. He can do so again.

* * *

It's easier than Vash thought it would be, to slip away in the confusion that inevitably follows the aftermath of a thwarted attempt to end the world, dodging the insurance girls and the bounty hunters alike, making an effort to fade out from the planet's collective consciousness.

Livio follows him, and that's fine too. He gets the feeling that it won't be good to stew on all of this alone (the lesson that that fight taught him stuck, after all) and he'd rather it be this man, mostly a stranger, than the girls. They carve out a space for themselves in the desiccated innards of one of the crashed ships, one that lost its people to the Ark, and they live on. It's not a bad life, truth be told.

By degrees, they work their way around to grieving, when they're sure there's space and time to do so. Apart, hidden from each other at first. Together, eventually, when compressing the emotion down makes it dense enough to pull them towards each other, inevitable as gravity. Much like a binary star, they stabilize when they're shoulder to shoulder. They talk more. They learn more.

Vash learns who Wolfwood was. Livio learns who he became.

"Truth is," Livio says, when he hears the end of that story, "you probably knew him better than I did. The real him, I mean- not the one that the Eye of Michael raised." There's a sad little smile on his face that crinkles up the tattoos around his left eye and sets the corners of his mouth atremble. "...At the very end. Was he..." Vash hears him swallow the word _happy_ and replace it with, "...at peace?"

He tastes amber whiskey and blood on the roof of his mouth. "Yeah," he says softly, not knowing if it's true or not. He hopes it was. "It was... a quiet death."

Livio breathes in in a shudder. "Good," he says, voice unusually thick. "If anyone deserved that... it'd be him."

Words become scarce, after that. The suns swim across the sky as the day ticks down, and the bottle between them slowly dries up. Livio gets up at one point to retrieve food, but they don't move much or speak, aside from that. 

Vash has lived long enough to know when letting an emotion run its course through the body has turned into wallowing in it, but there are very stubborn parts of him that insist it's the former. For the first time, he indulges in them, partly because there's no reason _not_ to. He's done what he set out to do, a hundred and more years ago, and the world is changing for the better. He's a relic, a literal living fossil, he has earned the right to waste away as he sees fit. He was supposed to anyway, as the color drained out from his hair, but for some reason, he persists.

He will think, months from now, that perhaps the reason he does not die now, is because Livio needs _somebody_. Right next to him, an assassin bred and forged for slaughter is curled up with his head between his knees and and arm shielding his face, trembling with the force of the grief he's suppressing. Vash hurts all over again, looking at him, but he offers nothing more than his company. A heartfelt touch or word, Vash knows, only breaks these kinds of men worse. The best thing that he can offer right now that will help is wordless, tacit empathy, the comfort of presence. And that, he has in reserve aplenty.

The next day (or week, or month, or hour, or night), Livio will do the same for him, when it's his turn to allow himself to shed the hurt from his body like a cast off asp skin, revealing all his tender corners before time thickens his skin again.

There are worse ways to live and grow, he thinks.

* * *

As with most things that Vash gets himself into, it starts with guns.

* * *

Livio returns from a trip to the nearest town to restock carrying two boxes of rubber bullets, which languish for a week in the middle of the table they salvaged and eat off of like some really fucked up pièce de résistance. Vash does not want to ask, not with words; thankfully Livio's fairly fluent in the language of querulous looks and quirked eyebrows. When Vash stares at him the first time all meaningful and abstract, the man looks chagrined and shrugs his shoulders in a way that speaks to the helplessness of habit. And every day after that, when they and the bullets are all sharing a room, before one of them leaves, there's always a brief pause, and a mute conversation that runs the same rails every time it happens.

 _Should I get rid of those?_ one of them will ask, in the flicker of a glance between man and box.

 _You don't have to,_ the other one replies with a little thinning of the lips--both with tinges of guilt, though Vash's is something other than buyer's remorse.

It's when Livio goes to finally throw them out that Vash sighs and says, "No, don't. Those were expensive; we shouldn't waste them, y'know." Livio pauses with his hand hovering over the boxes as Vash stands, eyes tracking him like a wary prey animal. "C'mon," Vash says with cheer only slightly forced. "Hate to admit, but even I'll get rusty if I let my gun sit too long."

Even though there's no reason not to let himself rust. Even if he doesn't particularly want to. It's just that habits have roots just like plants do, and the ones that are centuries old are near impossible to dig out.

Some part of him is touched, that Livio didn't ask him outright for a chance to practice with him. Another part is a little piqued by the way the route he took instead could be construed as passive-aggressive, if he wanted to think of it like that.

Livio blinks, nods, and scoops the boxes up. "I'll be right out."

Under the sun, Livio's tongue finally loosens a little, which is a bit of a relief. Vash is used to people not being comfortable around him all the time; he's just not used to it when it's people he's lived with for months. "What had you hung up before? If y'don't mind me asking." Livio's fiddling with the catch on one of his Fangs, looking oddly young and embarrassed for someone like him.

Vash does a quick check on his .45, catching one of the boxes Livio throws at him without looking up. "I don't know," he confesses. "Maybe I was just scared of hurting you."

Livio opens his mouth, getting a look like he might regret what he's about to say, but he says it anyway. "Y'know I can't die easy," he says, light and careful and as gentle as he can. "You've seen."

Vash remembers, though he doesn't want to. A little scrap of not-quite-laughter drops hollowly out of him. "Yeah, I have. You're not gonna roid out if we do this, are you? I'm not really up to that kind of abuse just now."

"You're fine. Razlo's... I don't know where he's gone, but he's gone. Hasn't talked to me since the day we... since then." Another shrug, a look in Livio's eyes like he's been cast adrift. "Doubt he'd come back just for this, though." He drums his fingers on the barrels of his Double Fangs. "So... First to three hits?"

Despite himself, Vash smiles at the prospect of good exercise and a game. "You're on."

They dart off.

It's apparent immediately, that Livio and Wolfwood were... not 'cut from the same cloth', Vash thinks, so much as dyed in the same vat. The shapes of their weapons aside, there's a weave in the way that Livio moves, the way he shifts his weight, that's a giveaway for a shared master. It comforts Vash as much as it agitates him (as much as it agitated him, when Livio was _against_ him and Wolfwood).

Some of Wolfwood lives still, in Livio. And even so, Livio had a hand in putting Wolfwood down.

Reconciling those facts is going to be painful.

In truth, Vash has never found much _exciting_ about a gunfight. Sure, it gets the blood racing, but so does any situation where your life's on the line. Break it down to the essence of the thing and it's really no more than a high-stakes game of dodgeball.

Going through the motions with Livio doesn't _change_ that, but it certainly says something that this mock battle is the most alive he's felt in who knows how long. How much of that is Vash remembering the _other_ fight with Livio, the one that even now (even _still_ ) incites emotion at an overdriven intensity he reserves for very few things, who even knows.

Whatever that emotion is, good or bad or angry or sad or even, somewhere deep down, a kernel of happy, now's not the time to be trying to parse it. Vash is reminded of that gently when Livio pegs him with the first shot, between two ribs. It punches the wind out of him; Vash rolls with the momentum it gives him and slides neatly into the cover of a huge boulder. He hears the muted noise of more bullets impacting the rock. It's only going to bruise.

"That's one," Vash calls over, pointing to the sky up out of cover to let Livio know he scored. He jerks it back down quickly before he gets shot again and pulls a speedloader out of his coat pocket, wondering why he's smiling, wondering why that smile's got teeth.

Livio laughs, all the way up until Vash dives out from behind the rock, hits the ground flat, and squeezes off a shot that nails him in the ankle, before vaulting himself upright and sprinting for the next bit of cover. It's more satisfying than it should be to get away with that scot-free, a thorny and vindictive kind of satisfied that Vash really doesn't like in himself.

But again. Emotions. Letting them run their course. He hasn't had a chance to blow off steam, not with the both of them pitiful and hurt. He does his best not to be reckless with a gun in his hand but with no chance of serious injury, he'll (just this once) cut himself loose.

No sooner does he think that than their game ends. Vash spots the opening he wants and makes himself _move_ , plugging one shot into Livio's gut and dodging the reflex shot the man takes at him. In the next instant, Livio is swallowing against the barrel of his revolver, arms frozen midway through aiming. They meet each other's eyes, a drawn-out moment of hesitation. Vash watches the light shift across Livio's irises as their decisions get made.

Vash doesn't pull the trigger. Livio twists his wrists and does. Shots two and three slam into him; with live ammo, each would have gone clean through his kidneys. As it is, Vash barely even flinches. He pulls his gun away and holsters it with a little rueful smile.

"You're really something," Livio sighs, in a way that says he'd be shaking if he were a lesser man. "How you ever had trouble with us, I'll never know."

Vash shrugs, a little shuttered. "I didn't want to kill anybody. Even when I did. That makes it hard, I've heard."

Livio holsters his own guns in silence, appearing as though he's pondering something. Vash can guess at least some of it, based solely on the downturn of his mouth. "Wouldn't have minded, if it was you doing it. I'd understand."

Vash laughs a humorless laugh, and Livio kisses him. Gentle, soft, more so than Vash would have expected.


End file.
